One thing I have been wondering If anyone has any experience of this is, if you set your own mail server set up, which I did for a while but did a renstall and never quite got round to it again, what sort of level of spam do you get? Presumably these spammers which randomly generate email addresses with well know servers i.e. @hotmail at the end, are far less likely to stumble across your server, but then as your server is going to be available on the internet, there is always the risk that a) they will try to use your server as an SMTP transport for their crap (if you've forgotten to set hosts allow and hosts deny for sending) and b) they may do some kind of a sweep and end up generating email addresses for your server generating a lot of email doesnt exist replies and/or a lot of spam for you.

In which case I may get around to setting up my server again, it never previously got anything, but then until recently I was about 2 years behind everyone else in terms of the level of spam I got, may just be lucky I guess.

shifty_ben wrote:In which case I may get around to setting up my server again, it never previously got anything, but then until recently I was about 2 years behind everyone else in terms of the level of spam I got, may just be lucky I guess.

Being careful about who you give your address too helps. Also avoid publishing your e-mail address on web pages.

Yea the main issue I find is that people have a tendancy to send me mail that has lots n lots of other email addresses in the to: box. Wouldn't be such an issue if it werent for the fact that a lot of mail programs will now add you to the other recepients address book. Next thing you know they have a virus and Im piled under with Spam again. Maybe I should just start sending chain mail back to the culprit in mass quantity

i got an idea for a new spam assassin, go around the houses of all the people who encoruage it and put a bullet through their head, i got woken up at 6am this morning because a couple of days ago some stupid girl put me on one of those "invite a firiend" spam list.. i got mine, i texted her at 6.30am woke her up HAHAHA!

no but seriouly it doesnt help that some ppl are extreemly stupid.. like sending a fwd email to 20 ppl and starting a chain where someone smartarse can get all those email addresses and ether sell them on illgeally or use it to spam.

when i tell them what they have done its like complaining to a brick wall or an untrained chimp because they dont understand what they are doing, i swear one day if i get spam from anyone im gonna post their personal details.. see how they like it..

i swear one day if i get spam from anyone im gonna post their personal details.

Problem is that is something you can get done for. I find its easier to just do a reply to all on the email, explain the problem with sending out an email with addresses strung together like that and sit back happy knowing that it has gone out to everyone they sent it to.
Depending on the kind of spam you get, you can also just waste their resources, on the odd occassion I get a phone call from some telemarketing lot, i am _very_ helpful, I give them all the details they want, just happens that I am inventing the details as they ask. They spend money on phoning you, then sending you information that you requested, which you never receive and then to top it all you go on the telephone preference service so they can't call you again.
Something similar goes for Spam email, look at the original message, do an nslookup on it, if theres a domain name linked to it, go there get some contact details and set up a new hotmail account. Email them saying Im really really interested in such n such a product, they email you back, so you set up email forwardign for that account to send every email onto them, perhaps with a subject of Spam isn't nice. I did that for a little while to a couple of companies, thinks its just a coincidence but I haven't received any spam from them in a while.

The most annoying spam is without a doubt the ones that say buy such n such, but theres no link or anything similar so even if you wanted to, you couldn't buy it from them.

well i would never sell products through spam, the spam annoys me the most is the "uneducated teen" spam which is were someone goes on one of those profile type sites, most prob being invited by someone equally stupid and putting their entire msn contact list on there. what are the schools teaching? cant they teach them about spam, how not to click on links in emails etc. as i said try to explain to anyone who spams you and all you get is a monkey replying "ooh oooh what are you on about" in their very broken chav-english

what i have found this week that its mostly young teenage girls who do this, who have the "i know how to turn my computer on and check emails" attitude to the internet.

would be nice if there is an "email-prefence" service you get one for phone fax and mail, which im gonna tell capital one about I DONT WANT YOU BLOODY CREDIT CARDS IM REGISITERED UNEMPLOYED I CANT HAVE ONE!!!!

If you are on the amil preference service and capital one are sending you stuff, report them. They get fined a fairly large sum of money.
Yes it has to be said a lot of the people I get those emails from are in that age group and of that gender, but blokes can be just as bad for it. I'm currently receiving a large volume of mail from WAYN.com which i supposed to keep track of where everyone is nowadays, but it wants to upload your entire hotmail address book to it.

thats the one i get WAYN, Bebo, to name but a few... and i get called the arrogent one when i reply saying "please dont put me on spam lists, if this happens again i have to report the matter"
i got so annoyed one day i had a good long rant on my personal webpage about it. all i get is "chill" from ppl, that dont understand why i get so bloody annoyed with it

if i get capital one fined, do i see any of that money.. i have a £8000 student loan

I dont think you do first time around sadly, think it goes to some "good" cause or another, but if you then receive more from them i think you get some compensation. If you then receive more then that counts as harrassment - IANAL tho

well i have one credit card and thats more then enough for me i only use it to spend money im about to get.. though i feel some credit card compainies are kinda idoitic with their advertising like the "cash back" ones, that just encourages ppl to spend more then they got.. thats why retail has slumped so much because so meny ppl have reasised what they have done at its too late..

anyway back to spam...
i tell you whats more stupid, that on profiles like faceparty ppl have their email addresses on the page where webspiders can pick it up and harvisit it for spam.. i encourage people not to put their email on their profile for that reason and again i get the monkey chav responce.. i dunno if i should give up trying to help people.

I long since adopted the position of if you wanna get spammed then fine, god knows ive warned you enough, but if you do anything that leads to me getting spammed I will forward it on to you! seems to work for the most part.